‘The White Lotus’ Season 3, Episode 3 Deep Dive and Theories: Trumpism in the Friend Group

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This episode of the Prestige TV podcast is brought to you by Coffee Mate. Coffee Mate has been searching the globe for flavors that pair perfectly with coffee.
So when they heard that the new season of HBO's The White Lotus was set in Thailand, they were inspired to brew up two new flavors, Thai iced coffee and pina colada flavored creamers.

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So for the love of coffee, go try them now. Hello, welcome back to the Prestige TV Podcast feed.

I'm Joanna Robinson.

I'm Rob Mahoney.

We're here to talk about White Lotus, Season 3, Episode 3, The Meaning of Dreams.

Rob, how are you doing?

I'm doing great.

I don't have any dreams of note to mark down as far as to parse their meaning.

Do you – three the meaning of dreams Rob how are you doing I'm doing great I don't have any dreams of note to mark down as far as to parse their meaning do you have any dreams you want to pick apart today gosh no uh we've already been through uh Rob Mahoney anxiety dream corner on a different pod that's true we've already talked about that do I have a recurring anxiety dream well let me ask you this Saxon brings up you, the very primal idea of having nightmares about fire and snakes. I can't say I've ever had a nightmare about fire and snakes.
Are you a snake dreamer? No, I'm not a snake dreamer, but what a fun thing that would to be. No, I don't.
I can't remember my dreams. And I think that's a blessing.
I think mostly my dreams are like awkward socially anxious interactions i think those are my usual nightmares nothing primal or elemental or anything like that do you know exactly yeah you're approaching people you think may have murdered a woman you met several years ago and they give you a blank stare while in response that's the kind of nightmare you have but do you think belinda knows that you're talking about belinda and our guy Gregreg gary of course my guy you're a guy but not my guy nobody's guy chloe's guy greg gary do you think belinda knows about what happened to tanya well clearly not or else she would be having a more outsized response yeah yeah yeah uh i feel like if if i well let me say this if i'm belinda and i know what happened to tanya yep i am not approaching greg gary no that's not happening far far away the last thing you would want is to be on his radar at that point absolutely um shout out to a couple of our listeners who wrote in to let us know that you know we talked about the voice cameo in episode two the voice cameo in this episode as the rat lift lawyer is uh the podcaster scott galloway yeah he has a really charming anecdote on his own podcast about how jason isaacs came over to his house to give him acting lessons and he didn't know that it was jason isaacs or who jason isaacs was it was just like this handsome man came to his house to give acting lessons and then he found out it was lucious malfoy but anyway he he got cast because you know the producers were a fan of him a fan of his voice then he did tried took some swings at this and they're like oh no podcasters are not the same as actors um and then they got him the jason isaacs uh acting boot camp package so i mean it seems quite lush imagine not not knowing who Jason Isaacs is. If he shows up at your front door, that's, that's a tough beat, but I've got acting coach to have.
Scott's been busy doing knowing about a lot, about a lot of other things. We're, we are available by the way, for voice cameos.
If you need like a nine one one dispatcher, a concerned lawyer, a panicking coworker as the office is being raided by the FBI, like for all of your projects. I think I want to speak for you, Joe, but I think we would be interested.
We would take the meeting. Do you have a theater kid background? No, of course not.
Yeah, absolutely not. But yeah, that's you are good at basketball and I am not.
We all have our talents. And you're not.
Okay. We already talked about the dreams.
This is the name of the episode. We open with Victoria Ratliff's dream.
I want to talk to you about this concept of the collective unconscious, which is what Piper and Vicky are talking about when they're talking about the dreams are mostly Piper is talking about. Any thoughts or feelings on the collection? Just broadly speaking? Yeah.
Pro if it exists, ambiguous to me if it does. But I'm open to the possibility.
This is like a Carl Jung joint, a Jungian idea. And I have to say, Jung really went off with this one.
Really, really knew what he was doing. He showed out and he showed up.
And I love that for him. This idea of the collective unconscious is common to all human beings.
He believed the collective unconscious is responsible for a number of deep seated beliefs and instincts such as spirituality, sexual behavior and life and and death. So it's more about the nature versus nurture, but this idea that your nature is somehow passed down through the generations, it's sort of imprinted on you.
And I think that's really interesting to think about, especially in terms of what we talked about last week, in terms the roles or the identities or the positions that these people find themselves in and can they break out of them or can they not can piper be different from her family or is she doomed to just be ratliffian like the rest of her life um what about these lessons that vicky has to impart on them about what does or does not designate a trashy rich person? You know, like these are all, you know, important questions. Can you can you correct your posture to break out of your people pleaser status? Like all of this idea is really rich inside of the Mike White universe.
Well, there's so much posturing happening, especially among people of this kind of class. And I think you're right to point out Victoria's statement about trashy rich people versus non-trashy rich people, because not only in the collective unconscious sense is there this like generational passing of humanity and understanding and shared experience.
There's also like a pervasive, broad humanity that we are all tapping into together collectively. And so this idea that we are drawing these very strict defining lines between us that, you know, Tim Ratliff couldn't possibly be the kind of person who takes drugs.
He couldn't possibly be the kind of person who takes a nap because who would do such a thing? And yet it's just very important to so many of these people that they appear in the world in a very particular way. And that's, I would think what gets in the way of your ability to tap into the collective unconscious if it's out there.
I do want to just, we don't have like a ton of emails to get to this week, but I do want to skip to this one that you just mentioned, Tim, taking the L'Oraspan. L'Oraspan, Tim, maybe my new favorite TV character of all time.
I'm a big fan. Yeah.
I can't wait to see where we go. I want to talk to you about his showering habits in a second but um jackie our listener jackie wrote in call me crazy but tim ratliff dry swallowing a pill is way more unhinged than rick releasing a bunch of venomous snakes i am an australian though so maybe a matter of perspective um dry swallowing a pill would you do it rob mahoney would do have done not my preference but i think it depends on the size of the pill there's something just really uncomfortable to me watching uh tim just sort of snap his head back as he dry swelled the pill i don't know just like for me it was much more him putting the pill on a hotel couch cushion and then putting it directly in his mouth.
That was what stuck out to me about that sequence. Yeah.
Tim Ratliff is making great use of the outdoor shower at the villa. But it's not a good sign if you're taking slow motion showers as far as your overall state of mind.
I really agree. How do you feel about an outdoor shower from Mahoney? I mean, only as an application post-pool or post-ocean.
As like a general daily practice, I don't really see it for myself. Feels too vulnerable to you, do you think? Yeah.
I'm open to some windows, but I want a closed environment. Okay.
I really want to talk about Piper Ratliff, actually sort of more than anyone else but what what do what do you want to say about the ratliffs and i'll get to my piper takes i mean starting with tim i i agree with you lazar pam tim is a is a wonderful television invention i enjoyed watching him go from basically like fully clenched mentally shredding his own brain with anxiety into absolutely blissed out slash slash napped out that was just a great transition point for the show and i can't wait to see where it goes i'm a little worried we're getting into like leaving las vegas territory uh with tim where it's like he's he's seeing the end of the line he's starting to make some pretty dramatic moves. He wants the phones in the bag.

Well, he didn't want to be cut off from the outside world, but he certainly wanted everyone else to now that his little white collar secret has escaped containment. Right.
It's no longer him gathering information. It's people calling in.
There's agents at the office. What the fuck is happening? Everyone is panicking.
Everyone is freaking out. And I will say the most tragic offshoot of that to me is him taking Saxon aside and Saxon finally getting his sweet, sweet moment of daddy affirmation.
And it is basically all so that he will shut up and put his phone in the bag. It's just it's a really tough look and a really tough moment for admittedly a contemptible character, but one who only wants one thing and it's daddy's approval.
Well, no, he wants to. OK, sorry.
He wants a couple of things. I want to step back.
But he doesn't want the big dogs to respect him. He does.
You know, no one's a bigger dog in his mind than his dad. He's the biggest dog.
He is. Yeah.
Tim, the unraveling that we're seeing here is sort of something I was really hoping for because um I was just talking to our pal Van Lathan about he's been speed binging White Lotus season one and season two because he's obsessed with season three and is like I can't watch any more season three I'm out and I was like go back and watch the previous seasons so he has in the last like I don't know 48 hours or something but he was talking to me yesterday about the great unraveling he was he was like having a slow hang with season two and then he was like he called it like the great unraveling and i think that that is something that is we know is so key to every season of white lotus this is just like watching armand unravel or watching you know whoever it might be um aubrey plaza's character in season two if you want to if you want to call that an unraveling and i do um and so this tim eyeballing tim from the start as the person who would be the funniest to watch unravel um and getting that so quickly in the season uh it's i think it's only up from here honestly with with lorazepam tim a lot of promising possibilities i you know it's i just don't think we're gonna get the tsunami joe we're gonna get

the tsunami of the soul right we're gonna we're gonna get tim ratliff being the man standing in

front of the wave at the end of the day i think is what might happen metaphorically of course

metaphorically speaking but one of our one of our listeners brie emailed in with an interesting

thought that i had not considered which is what if what exposed tim tim ratliff's crimes in the

Thank you. But one of our listeners, Brie, emailed in with an interesting thought that I had not considered, which is what if what exposed Tim Ratliff's crimes in the first place was something like Saxon's incompetence at work?

Right. What if Saxon, our guy who is very Vincent Adultman in the way he talks about his job, like I love work so much.

I love job. I love being this guy.
Doesn't seem to know what he is doing for a living. I would imagine is not very good at it.
Would not surprise me one bit if an email sent to the wrong place by Saxon ended up resulting in this kind of investigation. Or ended up kind of moving some of the wheels in motion as far as how Tim ultimately got here.

Yeah, I mean, that feels like the least of Saxon's potential crimes in this show, but I think it's definitely on the table for sure.

Also, on the lorazepam front, one of our listeners, Chris, wrote in, you know, because Vicky says, they're not addictive.

I just take them when I need them.

This is not true. This is not true.
true deeply untrue about lorazepam which is not chris wanted to let us know is not a sleeping pill even though tim is using them to get his nap reps in uh this is an anti-anxiety medication this is sort of like a quick acting sort of brief window are you afraid of flying take this lorazepam as you like you know as you're taking off and you will make it through the flight yeah which is perhaps why tim is like housing them because the the window is small so uh how many pills does victoria have left in her bottle i have i have questions about that and what's going to happen to her when she runs out right once once has consumed, once he's popped every pill there is to pop, I worry about Victoria at this point. Yeah, that'll be so interesting because it's one thing to watch lorazepam Tim become more and more unhinged.
Sober Victoria. I can't even imagine her.
No. Who is she? I can't wait to find out.
All right. So let's talk about piper and and one of our listeners laura pointed this out and i think it's it's really worth ruminating on this idea of the the piper archetype that we've gotten a version of each season on this show um and she points out like paula who's sydney sweeney's friend in the first season um and she mentioned Harper, Aubrey Plaza's character in the second season.
This person who's almost like a stand in for the audience who sort of like sees the hypocrisy, sees the shitty behavior, calls it out. You know, Piper has that great line about what the White Lotus actually is.
And, you know, right then the the blonde blob come in, the fancies come in and they're lululemon yoga like you know pipers piper's got a keen eye on everything but what usually happens in a season of white lotus to those characters is that mike white shows them like exposes them as sort of as fallible as as um vulnerable to the temptations of the of the white lotus experience or to shitty behavior or anything like that so which i would say is a critical part of why the show works the way it does like you you can't just have the preachy person off to the side commenting on everyone it's so much more interesting when those characters themselves can be co-opted, are susceptible to why everyone is here in the first place.

Yeah, and I don't feel like Mike White's treatment of them is that he's punishing them for their behavior. But just showing that we all are in a very similar luxury yacht if you want to look forward to next week's episode.

So what do you see coming for Piper, who we got a little bit more information on when she went to go visit uh the monastery yeah i that was such an interesting sequence for her because she goes you know she is greeted by this very friendly monk with a macbook a monk a monk book uh she makes her appointment yeah and then just breezes on out and like what My understanding from her from both of these sequences, when she first goes to visit the temple and when she returns here, seems pretty deeply incurious, honestly, for somebody who wants to be potentially spending a year here in a program, furthering her education, deepening her spirituality.

She makes her appointment and then she doesn't even bother to look around to talk to anyone else to even kind of like take in the scene it's like oh job done i'm up out of here it's also very it's very surface like so this idea it seems to be that piper wants to do a program however long she's going to stay there we don't know but this is not what she has pitched to her parents as to why she's there so she wants to do a program where presumably she stays at the monastery for some period of time and if if it were me i would want to see where are we sleeping at the monastery reasonable what's what's their daily schedule like what is all of that and it is very yes i think white girl privilege to be like i'm gonna go to a monastery a monastery in Thailand and everything is going to be better. And I'm so enlightened and I don't know anything about the practicalities of what this actually is.
That sounds, that sounds absolutely correct to me. So she even kind of shoots a little glance to the tourists who are there, you know, in a way it's like a tiny little throwaway moment, but to me is very aloof like aha like i i am i am of this environment like i will soon be a member of this place and you are

but a mere visitor despite the fact that i actually know nothing about what it means to

be here and live here or practice this faith at all exciting times for piper atlet

i'm sure everything will go perfectly well for her um saxon mentions that they are

I'm sure everything will go perfectly well for her. Sexton mentions that they are invited on Greg Gary's boat.
We'll talk about that a little bit more in a second for this what he calls a this full moon big holiday, which is a huge holiday in Thailand. every full moon they celebrate with this like massive uh beach party in the island that's won

over from where the white lotus uh is being filmed um and the description that i found was more than 12 more than 12 powerful sound systems turn the 800 meter beach into possibly the most popular open air nightclub in the world once a month once a month is like a heavy investment for like we're putting on the world's biggest beach rave but we're doing it every month um any hopes or dreams for the full moon party i mean how can you if you're mike white and you're like we're gonna set a season in th Thailand and once a month they have the world's biggest beach rave on this island. How do you especially since as we've heard over and over again that Mike White, the season came to Mike White in like a fever drug dream when he was in the hospital.
Right. So how can you not say like, let's go to a Thai beach rave? Is this something you're excited for in a future episode of White Lotus without a doubt I mean I'm excited for the yacht trip over there and all the exciting possibilities especially as it seems like our groups are going to be intermingling a little bit in some potentially surprising ways and we already get the developing love maybe strong lust triangle Chloe, and Saxon, who have now been officially

formally introduced and maybe raising some eyebrows at each other over one of them being a douche.

Look, who am I to judge if someone has a type? They're into what they're into. But

all of these people are going to be in one space with potentially as many rat lifts as want to come.

I think Rick is assumingly going to be off in Bangkok, which is unfortunate,

because I would love to see him get after it at the rave. I think the raving characters I am most

to get the lifts as one to come uh i think rick is assumingly going to be off in bangkok which is unfortunate because i would i would love to see him get after it at the rave i think the raving characters i am most excited about are those you would not anticipate ever ending up at a rave so victoria at a rave let's fucking go right like honestly gary at a rave i want to see i want to see what this guy is up to piper at a rave chelsea at a rave i feel like i know exactly what that's like and i love that for her she was born in a rave life's a rave for chelsea absolutely um okay to wrap up the rat lifts as as well as we can inside of their isolated storyline tim rat lift let's go back to lorazepam tim uh we mentioned last week that we've gotten several emails about this concept of like family annihilator which you and i both were like yeah it did seem slightly more plausible this week does it a little bit i still don't think white lotus is that kind of show and like it's it's honestly mike white has seemed over the years so conflicted about the murder part of white lotus that the idea of wiping out like half the cast in a mass murder doesn't seem like what he is interested in but i am willing and able to be surprised clearly what about the idea of lorazepam tim as the body

in the water that zion found well what whether or not that body in the water is dead we actually

don't know it's true certainly floating as if dead but not confirmed dead necessarily

so could that be lorazepam tim having like taken a stumble from the outdoor shower into the outdoor pond and i didn't even think about the outdoor shower the the falling risks of the outdoor shower while hopped up on lorazepam yeah it's it's a great theory i i think there's a very reasonable chance of that who is is he? Is Tim top of your list? Who's top of your list for like. Who the body is? Yeah.
I think based on this week, I'm going to say yes. All right, Tim, I'm I'm not rooting for you because you seem like you've done some shitty things.
And in general, I don't I don't root for rich people who have who have uh embezzled money but you know um life is long you didn't vote

for trump though did you are we really going to talk about trump tonight let's talk about the the

fancies the blonde ball what shall we okay i want to ask you how you feel i can't remember if

Thank you. Trump tonight.
Let's talk about the fancies, the blonde ball. Okay.
I want to ask you how you feel. I can't remember if Mal, Bill and I got into like the specifics of this.
We talked about this a little bit, but like, I'm really curious about Mike White's decision to like put Trump into this season. Cause of course, last, we got the voter versus non-voter conversation in the two couples.
And that was very like sort of like Trump, not Trump coded in a way. But to put Trump's name in there, again, making this season not knowing how the election was going to pan out.
How do you feel about that that as a choice? Feels like it aligns with the show. I mean, this is a show that talks about privilege, that talks about class.
If you thought you were tuning into White Lotus to get away from the political sphere, I don't know what show you've been watching. And you are sadly mistaken, unfortunately.
This is a show that deals with the economic realities of these people and what they care about and don't care about, what they value and don't value.

Putting the name Trump in there to me is just an extension of that.

In this case, like a very sharp dividing wedge between these three women, one of whom is, you know, she's not a Republican, Joe.

She is an independent.

Let's be very honest about everything that's happening here.

We really want to talk about Trump tonight.

So, okay. The bless your heart magic that plays across kate's face yeah unbelievable acting from bibb eyes full squint oh my gosh it's so good no teeth very good stuff from leslie bibb um rob is a texan how do you feel about uh texas being invoked in this in this particular way fair that that said that said, Kate has said that she's from Austin.
I know. I think this is what someone would say if they are from the area more broadly.
I'm going to guess it's more Lakeway B cave like that. That's the kind of vibe that I'm getting from Kate's overall deal, which, as we can infer, is like country club husband, like corporate high life.
You know, she is she's living a kind of privileged existence that is not demographically Austin, but is certainly adjacent to Austin. Like there's a lot of very white, very affluent, very conservative parts around the city proper.
You know, I have spent a lot of I go to Austin a couple times every year I love but I don't I've never

lived in Austin I'm a mere visitor so I'm not like trying to make any uh broads well maybe I am but anyway Joe go off say what you gotta say I love Austin I love Austin I will say I've had the most shocking things that have ever been said to me by a Lyft driver have been said to me by a Lyft driver in Austin.

Can you expand, please?

Just racial... things that have ever been said to me by a lift driver have been said to me by a lift driver in Austin so can can you expand please just racial stuff I think I look like I might be receptive to someone saying things that uh I am not receptive to so um how does that make you feel that that's the energy that you put out into the world great.
It's like how people would never offer me drugs because they think I look like a narc.

You know, it's just like, it's just my life. Something that the official podcast brought up that I thought was really interesting is the way that they transitioned inside of this conversation from talking about religion.
Yeah. To talking about Trumpism and this idea of trumpism as a kind of religion a kind of

belief system yep uh in a way that previous political movements in america have not quite

felt as i you know cult like is one way to describe it or however however you want to

describe it but like um this idea of like um the the figure the figure that we follow sort of idea of trumpism and um another thing that i thought was really interesting that uh gia tolentino brought up on the um official podcast is this idea of like when we first meet the blonde blob as as they are described by mike white laurie says it's like looking in a mirror which is of course is something that like jacqueline doesn't love to hear from laurie by the way but like um how how mike white really wanted to make it seem like these women are not that different and in so many ways they aren't that different even though we've we've dialed in on certain things that they either share don't share we've got two women who are moms versus a woman who is not a mom or we've got two women who have invested a lot of time and money in like plastic surgery and stuff like that versus a woman who maybe hasn't woman women who have focused on the career versus not all this sort of stuff so like these various little differences what's the biggest wedge you can drive is it trumpism is it something else um but then at the end of the day how actually similar they are and how interesting i think that is inside of this sort of trump conversation of like laurie and jacqueline are like oh no kate is so different from us we did not realize how different she then the question is, actually, how different is a white privileged woman who votes for Trump versus a white privileged woman who doesn't vote for Trump inside of this context? I think that's the question the show is asking. I think it is, too.
I think it's it's so powerful in that way, because you're right. These are three women who have a lot of things in common at the same time are in quite different places but they are paired off in all of those fascinating ways like i hadn't even thought about the career like the careerist aspect and how jacqueline and laurie might have that potentially in common and we we get to see them spend some quality time together if at kate's expense for a lot of this episode yeah uh but like it's cool to see all of these different ways in which it is naturally two versus one in every possible direction within this friend group.

And that only works if it feels balanced, if you're going to create this dynamic. Like you could write the show around having a very clear in-group, out-group.
But it's more interesting if it's sort of a revolving door and one of them is always feeling a little bit left out of whatever's happening. i think what i have my eye on most inside of this group in terms of things i'm worried about or suspicious about yeah is jacqueline has had a few speeches now that seem very much like a i'm a girl's girl kind of speech like talking about the patriarchal nature of religion or this that and the other thing a lot of masculine feminine in this episode like very directly called out yeah i don't trust that jacqueline lemon is a girl's girl at the end of the day i do not think that that is her energy at all and um i am i'm worried about the way in which she's pushing valentine on glory yep and i'm worried about how that is all going to shake out at the end of the day so it feels like a real swooping in situation for jacqueline potentially i i liked what you mentioned joe on the sunday pod about the flex of jacqueline here of it's not just pushing laurie but let me help you set this up let me make this happen for you not dissimilar from what saxon is doing with locky right like all hands on deck like i'm gonna hook you up i'm gonna show you how to do this yeah and the dynamic between the two women is a little different but it is very much like pushing in a way that feels like projecting in a way that feels like jacqueline really wants to sleep with valentine and you can you can imagine a scenario where maybe laurie does get some confidence maybe she does end up pursuing valentine and.
And Jacqueline kind of interjects herself into that dynamic at a time where she may not be as welcome as she is right now. 100%.
But in all of this, Lori is feeling like a little tentative at the beginning of this episode about that very idea. She talks about how, you know what, he probably wouldn't even want it anyway, Joe.
He probably wouldn't be interested in someone like me. Girl, Carrie Coon.
Meanwhile, in real life, I don't know if you caught this last week, but Carrie Coon went on the Marin podcast and was talking about her relationship with the legend, Tracy Letts, their marriage. There was a bit of a misunderstanding where listeners thought she had nodded in the direction of like, actually, maybe we have an open marriage, maybe of an open relationship.
Listener, let me tell you, the internet fucking exploded. So Carrie, look, Carrie Coon herself getting lots of interest from parties.
She is not even remotely interested in reciprocating. Our girl Lori is just going through it, though.
She doesn't seem to understand her appeal to the world.

This episode is brought to you by Max.

The Emmy Award-winning series Hacks returns this April.

The new season follows Debra Vance making a move from her Vegas residency to Hollywood.

Showbiz.

Tensions rise as Debra and Ava try to get their late-night show off the ground and make history while doing it.

Starring Gene Smart and Hannah Einbinder. Hacks season four is streaming Thursday, April 10th, exclusively on Macs.
Don't forget to check out the official Hacks podcast on Spotify. Will you tell me, Rob, given that, like, tell me a little bit more about the way in which the internet exploded when they thought Carrie Coon might be on the table for them.
She had to issue a follow-up statement in which she said that her relationship, she described it as open-minded, describing their kind of more modern sensibilities across the board, not open. And of note, for our White Lotus purposes, in that statement, did the speak, no, hear, no, see, no evil monkey emojis all lined up? Interesting it good gorilla marketing is a good monkey marketing oh nice i got it kerry knows how to play social media i gotta say it's true i i love her won goggins i already said on the pod with bill and mal how excited i was for grifter goggins to enter the chat here uh tell me tell me how you felt for Rick to step out of the doom and gloom into the conman persona that we are so used to seeing Walton Goggins how did that what did that do for you personally Rob Mahoney it brought an incredible light to my life to see Goggins in charmer mode again and this is relatively muted by Goggins standards uh he I'm actually starting to believe the Rick has a perpetual migraine commentary and that it's maybe not just an excuse to get out of these conversations because he always seems very burdened by something, very burdened by clearly his upbringing.
I'm sure some level of constant anxiety like my guy needs to smoke so fucking bad in this episode that he has to go on a whole ass odyssey to get some weed yeah so i understand where he's coming from but he can turn it on when he needs to turn it on and it's certainly enough to kind of start putting his plan in motion here with streets of la as far as how do we get to bangkok how do we sorry tough scenes for fabian in this episode as well uh you think you know somebody you You think you know how to pronounce their name. Turns out you've been mistaken for a very long time.
But yeah, Rick is getting where he needs to go ultimately. And as far as Chelsea's part of that, I will say probably knows more than she's letting on and is more aware of what is happening.
I think just kind of like letting everything roll off her back and allowing the universe to play out as it does but she seems too perceptive to be oblivious to the fact that Rick is weird and shady and is like doing all these random little jobs all the time he's doing something something you know Walton Goggins and Amy Lee would have been doing a lot of interviews around this episode this seems to be the like HBO's like this is the a Rick and Chelsea episode. You know, I guess because they go to the snake show.
Yeah.

And. lot of interviews around this episode this seems to be the like hbo's like this is the a rick and chelsea episode um you know i guess because they go to the snake show etc um and they've been talking a lot about like sort of the background of rick and chelsea uh goggins has said that they've been together for like three years um you know amy lou has said she she genuinely believes they're actually soulmates um and that there is this idea that their relationship has not always been this that this is a very different phase of rick's life yeah that he is having i think the way that goggins put it was like a midlife crisis and um you know so so the idea that that um chelsea's like come on what are you doing snap out of it let's have fun is not just like her sort of beating her head against a wall like that there is a version of rick that she has traveled with before yes that has been very different from the rick that she's experiencing at the white lotus here and so um i like knowing that because i'm just like girl what are we doing here but if this is like an unusual moment in the life of a partner who has been matching her energy, if not quite exactly her level of energy.
Who could? They're like nuclear power plants that cannot produce that much energy. But look, there's plenty in this for her, right? Like she gets to be at this nice resort.
She gets to experience this kind of life and enjoy all the privileges of it. Like it is interesting to hear that, though, that maybe at one point in time they had an arrangement and now it seems like they have a relationship, right? Like her using soulmate, her talking about being his life partner, right? That is a maybe overstating what their relationship is from Rick's perspective, but I think is indicative of a certain level of seriousness as far as what they are to each other.
I think it's what Chelsea has always wanted from him, which is just sort of like, I see you. You need me.
I'm going to be that for you. But something that Amy LeWood said on the official podcast that like really kind of blew my mind.
She was like, she keeps accusing Rick of being secretive and walled off um you know all all this stuff is focused on rick and what he's hiding she's like but we actually know so much about rick and we don't know anything about chelsea that's true she's just like she has sort of successfully hidden her life behind this like very bubbly outgoing not persona because I do think that's actually who she is but just sort of like the way she moves to the world she's asking other people about themselves and and she's got this insatiable curiosity which means she doesn't ever have to talk about herself right which is really interesting kind of kind of a different different breed of people pleaser from locky right there's like the version where you try to like mediate conflict or step out of it in the way he does and she is a de-escalator in a totally different way like she can bring people together she can talk them down she can make rick perk up in spots here and there in a way that no one else can bless chelsea and her presence on this show it's wonderful every single time and in very good spirits for someone who just got bitten by a fucking liberated cobra cobra and then she made it to dinner yeah i mean no problem if it were me i would simply not be leaving the room nope the dinner would be coming to me um bill very very i think correctly identified me as someone who seems like they should know things about astrology. You're someone who seems like you should know things about astrology and also someone who looks like they would be receptive to a Lyft driver's rants.
We contain multitudes, Rob Mahoney. We truly do.
None of it's true. Do you know anything about astrology, Rob Mahoney? I imagine I don't look like somebody who would know something about astrology so maybe it'll surprise us but sometimes our preconceptions are correct and I in fact do not not my area of expertise what is your sign? cancer cancer I don't know I'm going to say that like that means something but I don't know what that means you can just say something vague and ominous and I'll go along with it you know a water a water sign, emotional.
I don't know. I don't know the specifics of what it means to be a cancer, but I'm sure our listeners can let us know.
Please, we didn't mention up top, please do email us about anything going on with White Lotus, PrestigeTV at Spotify.com or more importantly, Monkeyshootout at Gmail.com. Thanks so much for mentioning that.
Speaking of emails we got and monkey shoot outs we had a couple emails about uh sitala's um outfit at breakfast that she's wearing okay there's this like it's this sort of tan button down sort of loose fitting thing with this like black what looks to be almost like an ink spot uh or some people said they thought it looked like a large bullet hole or one of our listeners dave uh pointed out to me rightly so that i would know about this and i do uh in pirate culture the black spot means you're marked for death uh you see the black spot it means uh death is coming for you so i'm glad you you could bring the pirate expertise. You know, you may have missed the mark on astrology, but no racism rants.
No, but pirate pirate. I do have it.
And yeah, so the black spot on Cizala, would that be a satisfying death for you this season? Potentially. Yeah, I think it depends on the way that she kind of weaves into the story of these other characters, right? If she is just sort of the person who owns the hotel and vaguely interacts and sometimes performs and then dies, that's not super interesting.
But if strange things happen in Bangkok, if she becomes even more intertwined with the fancies, even more intertwined with Rick in whatever game he's playing here. And Rick, as he's kind of kind of gearing up to talk to her in the first place.
There's so much like Rick snake stuff happening in this episode overall, but yeah, he's very like predatory in terms of the way he's almost like stalking her to her table, like kind of judging the scene, waiting for his moment. And I don't know how to interpret that within the context of whether she dies or not, but certainly as far as the game he's playing, it does make sense.
That was really interesting when they were at the snake show, among other things. First of all, would never go to a snake show.
Absolutely not. No circumstances.
Absolutely not. But the guy running the snake show who is like a local guy who runs snake shows.
I mean, he's a fucking pro. He's great.
information great delivery knows his way around a cobra like i i would trust those guys with my life i just don't want to go to the snake show absolutely not he mentions that the python can kill a big animal and we mentioned i think we mentioned this before that this idea that in some of the opening credit um images we've seen sort of a smaller animal taking on a predator uh i think specifically i would say in like the chelsea the amy lou wood chelsea title card so like this idea that is that uh we've had these predators if you want to say rick at breakfast or saxon in the pool um or you know tim ratliff in life or gary doing whatever it is he's doing yeah jacklyn lemon on on the on the hunt for valentine whatever it is like um but are we not paying enough attention to you know the smaller threats who could uh take something on something worth thinking about speaking of smaller threats time for our weekly nice guy talk uh check-in with uh with rob mahoney where are you yeah i just want to read a list of what guy talk was up to this episode okay he tries to parlay getting pistol whipped in the head into a body guard job okay he gets no indication whatsoever that sweet Allah is interested in him being her bodyguard no no affirmation whatever like whatsoever but that does not stop him from flagging down Mook as she's talking with her friends and walking with her friends to give her this non-update about his life very important to him that she knows all about it uh hollinger's bodyguards then come to

him and ask him to please chill in fact maybe you were closing to closer to losing your job than getting promoted to being a bodyguard the character of that conversation how would you describe it they come to bully him little turkey wants to be a rooster i'm gonna say some people Some people deserve to be bullied sometimes, Joe.

This guy is...

I hate your anti-guy talk. be a rooster i'm gonna say some people look some people deserve to be bullied sometimes joe this guy is he's way too big for his britches right now when all that he did was fail in his job like the stance that he should maybe be fired for this i actually think is pretty reasonable right like he had one job and it's don't let cars zoom in and out of here and he did both well yes listen i'm not saying he deserved a promotion i don't think he should be a hollander bodyguard because i you'd be very bad at it i don't i think he'd be bad at it i don't want that for him um but i i just okay we got it we got an email from our listener hank and i think it's it's a good perspective to have.
Whether or not you're right. I actually don't know if you're going to be right at the end of the day.
And I'm going to look like an asshole defending Guy Talk. I have no idea.
This girl can't even hang out with her friends without getting cornered by this guy. Oh my God.
She, whatever. Um, no, I want to interrogate a little bit because I think a lot of people interpret Mook's reactions to Guy talk in which she is very smiley and i think generally friendly as for being interested in his advances she has expressed no such interest at any point to anything he has said it has all been a polite smile a nod i will see you later a very like friendly exchange like she's being polite to him and he is going way hard all the time in a way that to me spells trouble okay um you might be right and i will look like an asshole and that's that's a reality that i'm willing to accept um i happen to believe that the mook and guy talk story is very sweet and i think there's a way in which mike white is actually like kind of a romantic i do agree with all these other things obviously we're rooting for chelsea and rick uh to figure it out um but our listener hank wrote in just to sort of put some hank who says he's from sort of a similarly like his his family's from a similarly like non-urban small southeast asian village uh environment uh he said where everyone is locally employed service worker can tend to not be a farmer or hard laborer the still pervasive historical context of parents approving matches and stable income being quite enough for a satisfactory marriage shouldn't be discounted as just quote nice guy vibes whether or not mook is looking for an exotic baddie a la season two's porsche is separate from this context it could simply be mike white's own creative liberty and i dare say personal injection into an otherwise ho-hum but stable lifestyle just giving a perspective as someone's whose ancestral roots are part of that world so this idea that like the conversation that mook and gaitak have had at lunch in a previous episode where he was like talking about his mom and they've known each other forever her brothers all that stuff yeah and it's like on the one hand uh from our sort of 2025 american perspective we're like is this the move but you know perhaps in the environment that they live in that is the move you know so but he he made that pitch and i would not say she jumped at I don't think she jumped at it i just don't think she said hard no no but they might have the like look if both of us are single in 20 years let's figure this thing out kind of arrangement but i just i don't see this going well for guy talk okay um we also saw him leave uh an offering of bananas at a shrine and i thought that was very that was very cool.
The four-headed God, which is called the Erewhon Shrine, which has nothing to do with really expensive movies you can get in L.A. Okay.
Belinda and Porjai. Yes.
Speaking of love stories to believe in. Hello.
How are you feeling about this? I mean, it's lovely. Belinda had herself a day.
Yeah. The, you know, she gets a great treatment.
She gets shown around the grounds. She gets to spend some quality time with Porn Chai being like held tenderly in a pool.
What is the going rate for that? Or is that kind of an off menu thing? Priceless, honestly. I'm just saying it seems nice.
I would do it. Yeah.
If Porn Chai would volunteer at my expense to hold me tenderly in a pool and help me kind of levitate and float that sounds sounds like a lovely afternoon bliss and then he like sort of you know has this awkward little goodbye with her porn chai has had too much aka like one one beer too much for him uh and then belinda hears something yeah in her villa is that what we were meant to believe not sees something right is she hears something yeah could you kind of identify what you think she was reacting to because it's hard to tell sometimes amid an amazing score like i love the score of white lotus and we get the kind of like calls of the wild in like the monkey like sounds of the jungle sense and also some like calls of the wild and every other conceivable sense happening in that score.

So it's very loud moaning, very loud moaning happening, you know, through yoga during some of these scenes where characters are alone and kind of steaming about each other in various ways.

So I don't quite know what she's identifying. It sounds like maybe kind of like a creaking door, like a step on wood.

Like I couldn't quite know what she's identifying it sounds like maybe kind of like a creaking door like a step on wood like i couldn't quite identify it i know i was i kept going back there i was like am i supposed to see something out the window is there a shadow and the i think it's just a noise and i don't know what that noise is uh you know one has to worry that it's Greg Gary up to no good. Or a monkey with a gun.
Or a monkey with a gun.

You don't know it could be anything or a snake okay how do you feel about uh check out toilet snake being introduced uh into this episode as a potential thing that could kill you this is a very primal fear that i have had i've had not had nightmares about this but it's one of those things where you you read that news story or like in my case i like it was on the local news or something when i was like eight years old and it gets wedged in your brain yeah and then what what are you to do about toilet snakes you're you're defenseless i used to read a lot of uh dave barry uh columns uh and he wrote one about uh alligators baby alligators coming up out of the out of the sewer what like in florida are they coming out of gutters or where are they coming from i could not tell you and perhaps he made them up but that yes i will say i haven't had dreams about them but i have had thoughts about toilet gators it might be something that is untrue but it's something that d that Dave Barry wrote about that I believed in. How did you feel, Joe, about Rick as someone who believes very deeply in the freedom of snakes? You know, just a liberator at the end of the day.
I think this could not quite possibly be clearer as a metaphor for him feeling like he's in a cage and needs to break out. People have been noting this snake motif because there was first this like first the snake choker that yep chelsea was looking at in the boutique when uh during the smash and grab which i would think we have to see again right it was so pointedly on camera that it's like we will see it on someone and that'll give us a tip as to who may have committed the robbery i would think chloe do not put that snake choker on even if you were part of the of the robbery okay so there's the snake choker and then of course there is the snake that literally bites her inside this episode something that amy lewood said uh in an interview she was like basically chelsea's the kind of person who goes through lives and see snakes and just embrace them without any care of the worry of of the danger that they might present she's just like oh you're a snake i want to hug you never mind your poisonous thing chelsea you cannot fix that cobra you cannot fix him but can she fix rick uh can i already fix rick you know like what are we gonna do no please sorry i didn't mean to interrupt no no go ahead uh i do wonder this about rick though because you're right about the the metaphor which is very clear on the surface him in the cage the snakes in the cage him feeling restrained in that way but as he's kind of talking it out with chelsea there's a lot of discussion about snakes being.
Right. And you get you get this bit from Rick about, well, even evil things shouldn't be treated like shit because it only makes them more evil.

and as a reflection of people treating him a certain way because of what he admits are the bad things that he's done we don't really know what those are yet yeah understandable putting

it in context and understanding his worldview as it applies to whatever he's after with hollinger

is a little bit more complicated because we have every indication, Joe, that you were correct, that Rick is trying to get some kind of revenge. It's satisfaction, some kind of satisfaction, as he says.
A lot of signs pointing directly to the idea that Hollinger probably murdered his father or was involved in some way. And he's looking for satisfaction.
But in that case, is Hollinger not also a snake? Is he not also someone who is not inherently evil and shouldn't be met with purely evil in response? It really strikes me as, satisfaction, by the way, as a lot of people point out, is iconic dual language. Like, I demand satisfaction.
Like, i demand a dual um i thought you meant dual language but you mean do like dual language like this was a dog yes dual i thought you were talking about the other kinds of satisfaction that chelsea is hooking him up with oh there you go um also true but um but i think that rick i i just really fundamentally feel like Rick is someone who is at a crossroads and at, on one branch of the road is Chelsea. And on the other branch of the road is Jim Hollinger, Bangkok satisfaction.
And one is a good choice and one is a bad choice. And I genuinely don't know based on previous seasons of White Lotus, what choice Brick is going to make.

I'm rooting for him to take the Chelsea branch of the road.

But I've rooted for so many characters in White Lotus that they have disappointed me. You can't do it.

So I don't know.

This is not the show for it.

The bit of foreshadowing I am most concerned with at this point is not a dead body.

It's not Chelsea almost dying several times in this episode.

It's her holding up a tank that says, you break it, you buy a broken heart on it and saying should i buy this just does not seem like things are gonna go well for her at the end of the day and i hope i hope rick snake or not make some kind of choice that makes sense for both of them i just i don't know i'm very worried about everyone and that's exactly where we should be. Episode three of White Lotus.
Okay. To wrap up, we got this fun prompt from our listener, Sean, which may or may not be tangentially related to an upcoming episode of The Rewatchables.
Who can say? But Sean says between Jennifer Coolidge and Parker Posey, it seems like Might White really excels at dipping into the Christopher Guest mockumentary talent pool. Which two Christopherest stars would you like to see in season four one hotel staff and one guest and just for people who are listening in case you don't know the great filmmaker Christopher Guest he made things like Waiting for Guffman, A Mighty Wind, Best in Show, This is Spinal Tap, and For Your your consideration and mask us a couple other things so um and he has a stable of actors that he likes to use oh yeah Jennifer Coolidge being a repeat offender uh Parker Posey as well yeah Parker Posey in waiting for Guffman is one of my favorite things I've ever seen um she would have pre-White Lotus if you told me and you gave me this prompt and you told me the general construction of the show Parker Posey would be my first round pick so dreams really do come true they do Jennifer Coolidge sneaky star obviously Tanya being crucial to all three seasons of White Lotus double Emmy award winner Jennifer Coolidge so Rob Mahoney yeah of the the classic Christopher Guest stable who are you picking to check in at the White Lotus and who are you picking to work at the White Lotus I'm gonna say we might have to like step out of time a little bit just because some of the cast of these movies are getting quite up there and so it would limit them to basically being like elderly grandparental figures popping into these stories which would also be fine and I would be open to.
Yeah. To me, the guest, I would love Fred Willard on this show as sort of like an ecstatic, overly friendly in everyone's business kind of guest in a way that I feel like we don't get often enough.
Right. We have a lot of rich people who kind of want to be in their little pods and not enough of them who want aggressively to be friends with everyone and i would love him in a in a context like this except for kate who was like remember we were at that but she doesn't even want to be friends she just wants to make the social connection and get the capital and then go back to her table don't you remember me i talk about beans a lot is that not interesting to you can you imagine the bean talk at that baby shower it was was off the charts.
She's talking about heritage beans.

She has a lot to say.

Okay. So you've got Fred Willard as a guest.
Who do you have working at the White Lotus? Our old friend and recent friend, Joe, Bob Balaban, feels like he would be great to work the staff at the White Lotus. I always pick Bob Balaban, but I was really hoping you would pick Bob Balaban.
How can you not just he reads as neurotic and exacting so easily that the idea of a bunch of rich privileged guests winding him up is is not a stretch of the imagination i have chosen for my guest um michael mckean yes of you know better call saw and other uh fame obviously um i just think he would do a really good job as like a disgruntled guest at the White Lotus. Just like he's often quite disgruntled, honestly.
Yeah. Patriarch of the family, comically disgruntled.
Yes. Giving real Chuck vibes from Better Call Saul.
And then John Michael Higgins as as a hotel manager i love john michael higgins i think he's a really stealth like lethal performer in these in these chris for guest movies and uh also he's done a lot of great voice acting work uh you might know him from legends of cora among other things and i just think as like a hotel manager who was like so good at putting on the like smarmy front while actively hating you. I think he would be absolutely killer at that.
So neither of us went for Eugene Levy or Catherine O'Hara. A couple obvious picks.
Jane Lynch, anything like that. I feel like Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara have already done like crass rich person pretty recently.
And so I'm good. And also hotel management quite recently.
Very true. Like we've seen it admittedly in a slightly different flavor, but let's branch it out a little bit.
I agree. Okay.
If you have any thoughts about Christopher Guest regular who should show up in White Lotus, I'd love to hear it. Please.
Monkeyshootout at gmail.com or PrestigeTV at Spotify.com. Anything else you want to say about this this episode or white loaves in general before we go rob mahoney i had just had a bit of a feeling with uh chloe who's played by charlotte laban as far as like she she was registering in my brain is very familiar and i couldn't put a finger on why and in this episode it finally kind of clicked for me that she has such a winona writer thing going on just like a kind of a resemblance in a way very very different energies very different kind of places in terms of like this is not a winona part but there's there's some kind of similarity there that's grabbing me she's been she's been reminding me of christen ritter a lot oh yes not energy wise but looks wise for sure um what do we think of her and of chloe and saxon we wouldn't really remark upon their budding friendship i hear you're a douche isn't that what she says you're a douche but she's into it you know is she into it or is he a mark i can't tell she's into something she's into the idea of it yeah uh he definitely looks wealthy and that is something that she seems interested in.
So love that for her.

I don't know.

Are you rooting for those two crazy kids? I cannot bring myself to root for them, but I will be watching with great curiosity where their relationship goes. Great.
Okay. So that does it for season three, episode three of the White Lotus.
Robin, I'll be back at the end of the week to talk more severance. Exciting should note that bill and i are also covering white lotus immediately after the episode ends on sunday nights you can watch all of this stuff one note on that you guys mentioned in the last sunday pod vis-a-vis guy talk you you know i i take this with with great consideration i've thought about it i I've talked to my agents.
I will not be hosting the Creep Radar podcast, despite the fact that it was so graciously offered to me. That's...
You haven't seen the art we've created for you yet. I have not.
But also, who simply has the time? You know, there are so many creeps. There are only so many hours in the day.
I could not be bothered. You are but one, Rob Seriously.
Okay. Well, we'll let Bill know that's your formal polite best.
Let him down gently, please. Okay.
So you watch all of those, including Rob's new show. What is it? Creep Detector? Creep Radar.
Creep Radar. All because I am empirically increasingly right about guy talk.
That should qualify me for the job but i don't want it on the ringer tv channel on youtube or on in spotify uh you know you just open the thing in there it's us talking um so uh that is what is going on also we hear you we will be back to the pit we tell you exactly when, but we will be back. And thank you

to Donnie Beecham for this episode.

To John Richter, who was like literally

breaking his back to put out all this video content

for you guys. To CTA

for being the best and helping out this

morning and

Justin Sales.

Always. The guy.

We'll see you soon. Bye.